BBC: The Story of Africa

In Trinidad and Tobago where I reside, our media refuses to allow programs that treat with issues from an African perspective. Some of us have been making appeals for our state media to encourage this as a means of addressing a number of issues relating to low self-esteem. The lone attempt was our program 'Dialogue' which was discontinued after numerous attempts by the state management to stop the program culminating in they refusing our funds.

Our media have always provided Indian and Eurocentric programs but they still think that the African point of view has no place in this country. The manager of one leading radio station, Power 102FM, when asked why their station would not host programs from an African viewpoint, publicly said that the country would become another Bosnia. This same manager allocated an entire radio station for East Indian programs, while he was the manager of the state media. Need I say more?

We, who operate these websites, are still saving to establishing our own radio station among other things. Most of the issues covered in these websites are not part of media discussions in Trinidad and Tobago where racial ignorance/racism is rampant.

"The Story of Africa tells the history of the continent from an African perspective.

Africa's top historians take a fresh look at the events and characters that have shaped the continent from the origins of humankind to the end of South African apartheid.

See the rise and fall of empires and kingdoms, experience the power of religion, the injustices of slavery, and chart the expansion of trade between Africa and other continents.

Hear what it was like to live under colonialism, follow the struggle against it, and celebrate the achievement of independence."

Above is BBC's opening comment to their new radio and Internet series.
I must say, like the numerous hours some of us spent of BBC's message boards must have prompted them to bring this series. Many of us have written them condemning a lot of their bias reporting on Africa.

I will be monitoring the series and highlighting misunderstandings and attempts to obfuscate the truth.

I will be presenting my findings along with other comments on this Website RaceandHistory.com and I will extract anything valuable from their exercise.

People should be mindful of the fact that competition in the media is forcing many large media houses to present 'African perspectives'. This is only about appeasement and not a direct confrontation with the truth. Independent news groups that treat with these issues are cutting into their circulation figures. Therefore, they can use their resources to wipe out competition. Their motivation is still greed only this time they are peddling the 'African perspective' instead of Slaves.

One obfuscation in BBC's first Internet episode is in how they dealt with the origin of humans. With all the historical and other scientific evidence available about our human origins, they gave the impression that the African origin of humans is still speculative.

Maybe BBC and CNN only employ Africans who never struggled for the presentation of this information to write their scripts. These media houses normally choose the enslaved pseudo-intellectual Africans, who want acceptance from the White business elite. Of course, some of these Africans, like the Gates fellow of africana.com, try to put forward some fanciful spins while contributing to deception. They will never admit that they were and are still about their own financial gains and African issues were means to that end. Their objective was not about addressing THE PLIGHT OF AFRICAN PEOPLE or the enlightenment of all people.

I am certain that BBC will not tell the world how much European media houses contributed to misinforming most people and how Europeans have amassed wealth on the false premise of they being superior to other people.

When they killed the Indians, enslaved and killed Africans and spread their propaganda that Africans were less than human, they were committing genocide. They have not addressed this - the world's biggest holocaust - the African Slave Trade. And before some foolish person e-mails me to explain how some Africans participated in chattel slavery, let me remind all that Jews also collaborated with Hitler in the Jewish story and that did not stop Germany from paying reparations. When I say that there is a debt owed to African people, I mean even Africans who profited from slavery must pay the debt.

The inferiority complex that many African people developed and the superiority complex that most Europeans have today were the result of European 'religion', politics and their media. The media is largely responsible for the ignorance and the continuing mental enslavement of most people. BBC, CNN and other media houses that profited from the ignorance of people owe a lot to all of humanity.

BBC's act of presenting an African perspective is both good and bad. The good is, BBC has the resources to present the information to the wider world. The bad is, those people are truly ignorant of the past will believe that White people have now come to teach/save them, so the attitude of honoring a fictional white saviour remains. People cannot become self-reliant if they continue to make heroes of anyone but themselves, and worst if they maintain the colonial attitude of blindly honoring White people.

Small African news groups should really link-up and pool resources to do their own investigative journalism. But, most times when I observe an African oriented website expanding on this Internet, they are doing so with the funds from some Eurocentric news group and at the end of the day they completely sell over. Their motivation is the problem - they are hungry people exploiting others - the European model. These Africans are continually vying for the opportunity to sell other Africans. They package Africans into large groups then sell them to the same businesses they formerly discouraged them from supporting.

People should get familiar with all the people, especially African historians, who have struggled unselfishly to tell the African story, the very people these large media houses rejected. They must give the credit to the true heroes of the struggle to correct the negative portrayal of African people. Here is a link to some of these esteemed gentlemen and if you never heard of them, blame BBC, CNN, and all the other media houses for deliberately blocking true Africans from telling our story.

After you have visited the link then go to BBC and if you find value in anything presented, check the books of these gentlemen to see who first told the story and credit them.

African people who have struggled for a correction to the injustice of misinformation should tell the African story.